


Clary and Jonathan's Sibling Shenanigans

by Bagell



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: 3x11 Rewrite, Actor Jonathan Morganstern, Alternate Universe - Human, Artist Clary Fray, Canon Rewrite, Mundane Clary Fairchild, Mundane Jonathan Morganstern, Storyteller Jonathan Morganstern, kind of?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 21:14:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17947247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bagell/pseuds/Bagell
Summary: She blinks blearily, and all she can process is makeup and eye boogers and gross but she thinks there’s someone standing there, straight and still.Whose fucking apartment did she fall asleep in last night and just how drunk did she get?“Who are you?” she says, intelligibly.The stranger smiles, probably, and as things start to come into focus more, they say, “Don’t you see the family resemblance?”It’s a perfect time for Clary’s vision to suddenly work, and she is faced with her older brother.aka, Clary and Jonathan in a mundane world.





	Clary and Jonathan's Sibling Shenanigans

**Author's Note:**

> hi! so this is disastrously unedited and an honest mess, but i really really love clary and jonathan's dynamic and i'm so gone for all the intricacies in jonathan's character. plus everything about him is brought up from his awful childhood, so i wanted to see what they'd be like without that, ya know? just happy, ridiculous, snarky siblings with big creative dreams. this is COMPLETELY self indulgent tho ':D
> 
> i'll probably do more of these, rewrite more scenes to fit these versions of them. hope you enjoy!
> 
> (also i have never had a hangover. so inaccuracies times 10 trillion)

Clary slowly woke up from her slumber, blinking her eyes open. Ew. Crust. 

Good fucking  _ god _ , why does she still have eyeshadow on? 

Oh fuck that’s a full face.

She inwardly growns. Waking up with last night’s makeup still on. A wonderful start to the day.

“Good morning,” someone whispers, and if not for how absolutely  _ shitfaced _ Clary got last night, she would’ve jumped up in surprise. As it is though, she is still suffering from a  _ massive _ hangover and actions and words sound like far too much work right now.

She shakes her head a bit and lets out an exhale, dry and short from her parched throat.

_ Water _ .

Apparently humans need it to live and last she checked Clary is one so  _ why does she not have water right now? _

She sits up slowly, bracing her arm on the back of the grey couch ( _ couch? Why did she sleep on a couch? _ ), cursing every single goddamn decision she’s made as she turns around.

She blinks blearily, and all she can process is  _ makeup _ and  _ eye boogers _ and  _ gross _ but she thinks there’s someone standing there, straight and still.

Whose fucking apartment did she fall asleep in last night and just  _ how _ drunk did she get?

“Who are you?” she says, intelligibly.

The stranger smiles, probably, and as things start to come into focus more, they say, “Don’t you see the family resemblance?”

It’s a perfect time for Clary’s vision to suddenly work (only after she’s embarrassed herself an  _ extra _ bit of course), and she is faced with her older brother.

Clary glares with an animosity one could only ever direct at a sibling when she realizes she had fallen asleep in her older brother’s apartment on his couch. She suddenly notices her clothes (impressively, without looking down), her body draped in the blue cloth of the dress she wore under her graduation gown. Which means she probably passed out. And was brought here. Unconscious. To Jonathan’s apartment.

Which is ample ammunition for the next eighty years for him to use against her.

She grits her teeth and pushes off the couch, intent to get out and never speak of this again. 

Of course, she’s also nursing a giant hangover and falls over in the next second.

Jonathan bursts into laughs and walks over to her, lifting her up by the armpits and back on to the couch, releasing puffs of laughter around her defeated thrashing.

“I can’t believe you walked the  _ wrong way _ to get out and  _ still fell over _ ,” the asshole says, still laughing and Clary glares harder.

“Jonathan,” she says, deadpan.

“In the flesh. Still processing after being passed out last night, huh. Yes, correct, I-am-Jon-a-than,” he speaks slowly, enunciating. “Your-ol-der-bro-ther.”   


This time she calls him an asshole out loud, directing all of her tiny hangover strength into punching his arm.

“In the flesh,” he teases, clearly unfazed (well, duh. Hangover Clary is just regular Clary with less strength and extra stabby, and it’s not like she has access to any knives right now. That said, she does pout and give him an  _ extremely vicious  _ poke).

After being fed advil and tea (because even though he tried to give her water, Clary  _ insists _ on the finest earl grey. Jonathan only relents because he wants to honestly see where this goes, if it can get any funnier), Clary is still pouting, curled into her older brother’s side even while continuously kicking at his shins where their legs sit dangled off the cushions. She thinks she’s somewhat safe (no, she doesn’t), so she turns toward him to retort. “Just because you’re giving me advil and letting me crash on your couch doesn’t mean I owe you anything, Jonathan.”

Jonathan’s eyes light up immediately, and he grins. “Wow, I see advil brought back my real face. You can recognize me  _ and _ form full sentences! I’m so proud, little sister.”

Clary’s glare returns full force as she inhales and exhales through her nostrils ( _ she looks like a tiny bull _ , Jonathan would gleefully inform you). “Where’s Simon?” she says instead, not acknowledging his snark or her state of being.

“Back at his house, after he and Izzy carried you here drunk off your ass and half dead. Don’t worry,” he informs her quickly, tapping her on the nose only to have her honest-to-god hiss at him. “They came down the street singing loudly about their ‘intellectual drunk queen’ while Maia recorded the whole thing.” He nods his head, seriously. “You were in your  _ element _ . The most magical stage show I’ve ever seen.” Jonathan shakes his head in fake amazement and that’s  _ it _ . Clary moves to get up off the couch but Jonathan and her headache push her back down.

“You’ve been asleep for  _ days _ ,” Jonathan exaggerates, drawing out the syllable. “You must be starving. How about I make you some breakfast and another nice cup of tea? Earl grey again, your favorite, as you  _ never _ fail to inform me.”

It’s teasing, obviously, and Clary lays her head on the back of the couch as she nods, and Jonathan starts to saunter off. But she hears the underlying concern there, knows he’ll want to know what happened last night even if he knows she can take care of herself. Knows that he’ll probably come back with one of his sweaters, or a coat she’s left here before so that she can change into something warmer and more comfortable.

It’s only confirmed more when he turns around right in the doorway, eyebrows raising when he remembers something. “Speaking of Simon, by the way, he asked me to tell you to text him, just to see how you’re doing.” Jonathan turns around again and exits fully this time.

Clary knows Jonathan’s secretly hoping she’ll do the same to him too.

She overhears Jonathan working in the kitchen, fixing something up as pans clank and sighs, sinking deeper into the comfy couch. Her thoughts drift to last night and she lets out a breath, allows a bit of the drunken story to make its way to her brother, so he can know, stop worrying a bit. 

Also because she needs to vent, vague as it might be.. “What did she do to me?”

Jonathan laughs from the other room and Clary’s lips turn up a little bit. “Kind of like our family emblem, then? Getting absolutely hammered because we don’t know what to do around cute people?”

Clary snorts, inhales. “It’s a genetic thing, I’m sure. Nothing more.”

“It’s a  _ symbol _ ,” Jonathan teases, easily slipping back into this age old argument between them where Clary pretends she has nothing to do with Jonathan and Jonathan states what is  _ clearly _ the truth. They’re obviously platonic soulmates as much as they are born to brother and sister. He slips into a cheesier voice. “Of our  _ bond _ .”    


Jonathan walks into the room, carrying a big plate with a heaping of grilled cheese (listen. Breakfast foods are cool but Clary is insatiable and Hangover Clary even more so) and sausages, as well as, as predicted, a change of clothes. He smirks. “I wouldn’t be me without my little sister.”   


Clary rolls her eyes on an inelegant laugh. “I’m sure you would be just as much a disaster around attractive people even without my existence.” She blows out a sigh. “If it were up to me, it would’ve never happened.”

“Us being siblings or us being dysfunctional around people we want to impress?”

“I meant the latter but the former works too,” Clary says, even as she eagerly reaches out to grab the plate her sibling fixed up for her. He gives it to her, rolling his eyes.

“So,” she says, around a mouthful of grilled cheese. “Where are we?”   


Jonathan grins, recognizing the game. He thinks for a second. Eventually, he raises his chin. “Siberia.”

Clary continues on, unfazed despite the jump from their previous setting. “The apartment they’re in can move?”

Jonathan looks at her more directly. “Cool, huh?”

Clary giggles, tossing her hair. Okay, so then, ignoring plot holes. “Of all places,” she muses, “Why the hell Siberia?”   


Jonathan pouts for a moment. “Of all people,” he mutters in retaliation. “Why do you only use borderline curse words with me?”

He grins harder then, jumping up onto the coffee table and doing a spin. “Our heroes are in Siberia, locked deep in their apartment, surrounded by flurrying snow, slippery ice, and suffocating cold. Their teeth chatter despite them  _ obviously _ trying to look super cool to no avail.”

Clary smiles widely, biting her lip excitedly as she moves the plate aside to grab her sketchbook (which of course Simon dropped off with her and of course Jonathan left on the coffee table for her when she woke up. Sweethearts). She flips to a page already covered with doodles of their faceless ‘heroes’, ready to start sketching furiously. 

“Lilith sent them there,” Jonathan continues, using his voice to blacken the commentary, marring it in creepy curls and spikes of confusion. It’s helpful to add character to her drawings. “To keep them safe.”

Clary scoffs. She raises an eyebrow at her brother even while her hand does not oppose his spins of the story they’ve been mindlessly churning out since Clary shouted she wanted to go to Paris not even a day after she knew what ‘Paris’ was. “Lilith sent them to the freezing cold to quote unquote ‘keep them safe’?”

Jonathan smiles. “Well that’s what she’ll tell you, isn’t it?” He stalks around the coffee table, using the full expanse of it and the floor below now that Clary’s sketchbook is out of the way. “You’re an escaped prisoner,” he murmurs and  _ oh my god _ that tone visualized. Clary immediately starts a larger sketch on the page, spanning half of the sheet of paper amidst the chaos. “If the Clave found out you were still alive, they’d kill you on sight.” Clary smiles gleefully as she adds a set of fearful eyebrows to the figure and a target in the shape of the angel rune.

Jonathan stares at her. “But don’t worry,” he promises, seeing the character as he stares straight through Clary’s eyes. “They will never find you.” He changes his voice then, insistent, desperate. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Clary’s on the verge of screaming. This is creative  _ gold _ , and her hand is burning as her sketches become messier and more like scribbles by the second but this is just  _ so good _ . It’s the best addition they’ve had to this story in awhile.

She looks up then, satisfied with her scribbles. She slides the book over to him and he smiles as he plonks down, grabbing it and scooping out his own pencil. It’s her turn to add to the narration. “If you’re looking for a thank you, you’re not gonna get it.” It’s the most she’s felt, embodied this character in a long time. He grins like the Cheshire Cat as he sketches the visual.

She leans over him, watching as he laughs and flips the page, joyfully drawing a new figure who promises across the page, “You don’t have to thank me. You’re my sister.” Then, in a messier, darker script. “I’ll do whatever it takes to protect you.”   


Jonathan is most certainly not an artist, not as fluid with a pencil as Clary, not as willing to work with a snub of charcoal.

But his storytelling, the improvisation skills he possesses and the way he can shift his all into whatever he’s passionate about, even if that’s faking it as a character in their story,  _ that _ is raw skill.

They both know it, both discovered it as they found Clary’s love for art, cultivated it as they went to different lessons, sought their passions, still doing this daily, then weekly, less often but never stopping. They learned the basics elsewhere, the details themselves, but this? This is complete, promised  _ fun _ .

The next page is blank, devoid of background noise and shading as Jonathan adds more text, far more proficient in words than in pictures even in their comic like story. “You’re the only family that I have.”

Clary gingerly takes the book back, adding below it in words, but also pictures, curling around them and through them. “I guess I could say the same thing about you.”

They work together on the next page, further together as their hands move across the paper at the same time, practiced in only the way sibling who have had their lives intertwined from the start could. It’s a face, of character 2, not enough to make them recognizable through physical features, but enough to show punctured emotion, slow shock through loud surety. Minutes pass by as the clock ticks. Both of them so easily lost in the tale.

When it’s done, enough at least, they set it aside and collapse against each other, exhausted. It’s the largest chunk they’ve covered in awhile and they’re both so delighted but so very tired.

“You know,” Clary says. “I have a feeling you haven’t eaten yet. How about some of that breakfast?” She gestures to the plate that has one singular sausage left.

Jonathan gasps. “Little sister, are you offering me food? Are you pledging an  _ entire _ ,  _ generous _ item of consumption to  _ me _ , your older brother? How kind of you! How unexpectedly virtuous!”

Virtue disappears in the next second when Clary gets annoyed and eats it in one bite. She tosses her head up at him and stares straight into his eyes as he grimaces while she eats with her mouth wide open. “Not anymore,” she says, loudly chomping. She swallows loudly, exaggerated and lets loose a loud burp. “Your time ran out.”   


He brought it upon himself, in Clary’s kind opinion. “Of course,” he says, resigned. “Breakfast for one unappreciated older brother, coming right up.”   


Clary grins at him, eyes closed in satisfaction.

Jonathan rolls his eyes and gets up, strutting out of the room.

Clary scoffs. Drama queen.

But then Clary remembers the mortification of this morning. And there it is. An escape opportunity! Before Jonathan can tease her anymore or bring up the hangover!

Clary scoops up the clothes and dashes.

She comes back a second later to place the dish respectfully in the sink and letting it be filled with water so the oils are easier to wash out.

Then she dashes (this time the correct direction)!

She bolts to the door jostling at the lock.  _ Stupid brother and his stupid tendency to get apartments with door locks that make no sense! _

She kicks at the door, face morphed into a wildly ferocious pout and finally gets it open.

“Clary c’mon!” she hears behind her in a laughter-riddled voice. “You can’t go out there! It’s cold and you’re literally the most easily cold person I know.” 

Clary doesn’t know how the screen door works. She looks around, confused, frustrated.

Jonathan laughs louder. “You’re never gonna survive!” he wails dramatically.

(She wouldn’t be Clary if she didn’t respond just as dramatically, okay?)

She turns, ferociously, hair fanning out. “Watch me.”

She urges the screen door open with a loud crack ( _ Goddammit _ , Jonathan thinks.  _ Fucking little sister, always breaking my doors _ ) and pushes outside.

It’s windy.

Instant regret.

She should’ve just stayed inside and endured the teasing like a big girl.

But Clary is very little and very stubborn so she marches forward (after getting a face-full of her own hair), clutching the change of clothes with one hand. Surging ahead, she locates the sweater in the pile (soft, bless Jonathan) and shoves her head into it.

Shit, that’s one of the arm holes.

That’s the right one!   


Victoriously, Clary wrestles with it, arms making her way through the tangle.

But again, Clary is very little.

A gust of wind blows, and Clary, already greatly directionally confused with her head and arms going every which way in this cocoon of a gray sweater, immediately falls over.

When she is warm and back inside, Jonathan has been laughing for an entire three minutes.

He hasn’t stopped yet.

Clary really fucking hates her older brother.


End file.
